Standing beneath the steeple, playing in the cornfields, learning to be a pastor while trying to faithfully preach the Good News, and the church who loves me anyway.

Just Jesus

Intro
Paul is steamed. There is no other nice way to put it, and in fact, Paul himself doesn’t waste much time with niceties.

Let me give you a little background. This is the only one of Paul’s letters that he doesn’t begin with warm greetings. He begins this letter by identifying himself, and then only six verses into this letter, he dives right in with “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one you called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.” And that sets the tone for the rest of his letter.

This baby, fledgling church is ruining everything. Not only are they themselves going astray, but Paul is quite concerned that their witness will ultimately hurt lots of churches. And he simply cannot stand for that, so as quickly as he learns of the problem, he sets his pen to paper in hopes that he can turn this church around before too much damage is done.

And as we join the story in the passage today, Paul has just set his sights on Peter, who is spreading the word in another location. That sounds great…sounds like a great partnership between two giants of the ancient world. Except for the fact that Peter, according to Paul, is spreading a completely different gospel.

Peter, it seems, wants people to live under the covenant of the law– that is, these folks are still to practice works righteousness where they may earn their salvation by being circumcised, by keeping the over 600 laws, by doing the right things.

And for Paul, this is downright dangerous. If folks are going to be about the business of “earning” their salvation, then as Paul bluntly says, “Christ died for nothing.”

Imagine what a slap in the face that must’ve been. Peter would’ve loved Jesus as much as any of the others. He would’ve mourned and grieved at his death. And he would have been overwhelmed at his resurrection. But imagine the pain it must’ve caused to hear that all of that was for nothing.

[Finish this/make transition!!]

Just Jesus
When we talk about being justified before God– and if you’re having a hard time remembering what that means, think of it like a typewriter. When your text is justified, everything is in a nice neat line. When we’re justified before God, we’re set in line with God.
We know, at least on paper, that Jesus is what saves us. But sometimes, we’re tempted to change that a little bit. It’s almost like we believe that it’s Jesus and something else that saves us. Maybe Jesus and good works? Maybe Jesus and tithing the right amount? Maybe Jesus and thinking the “right” things? We live in a society of “measurable outcomes” meaning that we like to see certain steps checked off before we believe a job is done. It seems way too big that “Just Jesus” could save us, that our salvation could simply be a gift.

That’s where Peter got all tangled up. He didn’t mean to mutilate the gospel into something new, but he was a flawed human being just like the rest of us. It just seemed a little too good to be true that Jesus, and Jesus alone was enough. So when folks were all worried about eating Kosher foods and abiding by the covenant of circumcision, that sounded like a pretty good addition. Almost as if he was saying, “Do this… you know… just in case.”

But as Paul points out, you can’t have it both ways. If you have a “Jesus and” theology, then you have completely lost sight of what grace is– and further, why Jesus died.

I don’t often preach two texts together, because as often as not, the theme linking the two passages is a stretch at best. But what I love today is how this Luke text also drives the point home.

We meet this woman about whom the pharisee says, “He would have known what kind of woman this is who is touching him–that she is a sinner.” The pharisee, apparently much like Peter, needs the rules for the “religion” to work. People in the pharisee’s world need to be and do the right things in order to be “savable”.

We see a “Just Jesus” philosophy at work here. The woman, as far as we can see, hasn’t done the “right” things up until now. In fact, we know that “her sins are many”. But Jesus has forgiven her, and repaired the brokenness her sin has caused, making her whole once again.

That’s pure grace, and as the famous song reminds us, it’s nothing short of Amazing.

When Grace is at stake
When I was playing team sports, our coaches always managed to slip the phrase “losing gracefully” into our talks on sportsmanship…the idea being that when the time comes that you lose the game, you don’t pout and act mean and hateful. Instead, you shake the hands of the other team and remind yourself about how much fun playing the game.

That’s a nice concept. But forget about losing gracefully–what happens when you just lose grace?

I read a lot, and I’ve done a lot of reading from many different time periods. If Literature is any indicator, which I think it must be, then there’s been a definite shift in the way our society views blessings and good things. When people were really tied to the land, there was a definite reminder of God’s hand in our world. But as the industrial revolution happened, and we realized we could “make” things and produce things of our own accord, our sense that we controlled our own destiny has become greater and greater.

I don’t know if you realize it, but grace ought to be put on an “endangered species” list somewhere. Grace is very much at stake in our society because we’re a “do-it-yourself” society. We really believe that everything we have is a product of our hard work and position in life. We believe that we’ve earned things– even how people should treat us is a direct result of how we’ve been towards them. And the problem with this is that we not only hold ourselves to these standards, but we hold everyone else to them. Our mantra isn’t really “Saved by Grace through Faith” as much as it is probably “Everyone gets what they deserve.”

We’re absolutely at risk for losing any sense of grace in our lives. The more we worry about who deserves what, and who is doing the “right things, the less we need Christ at all.

Practical Grace
The woman who washes Jesus’s feet with her tears is overwhelmed by the saving presence of Christ, and she can’t help herself… she is so overwhelmed that all of this just comes pouring out of her. The things she does is done as response to what Christ has already done for her.

If I had to call that action something, I might call it “practical grace.” Grace is a lovely thing for us to talk about in theory, and it’s a great thing for us to remember that grace upon grace has been showered upon us. But if all we know of grace stops there, then we’ve missed the point as badly as Peter and the Pharisee.

When behaviors are modeled for us by stories in the Bible, they are never intended for us to look at and simply say, “Wow. That’s wonderful.” No, they are always modeled for us in hopes that we will learn from the good example and do the same thing in our own lives.

“Practical Grace”, I think, is how we go about living into our identity as having been saved by Christ’s redeeming work in and through us. Practical grace is that outpouring of love and generosity of spirit that we shower upon all people.

The cross of Christ should change us. What we believe about Jesus Christ and his cross should also make us more gracious and appreciative of the different ways in which people in the church witness to their embrace of Christ and this story of the cross. But you know as well as I do, that sadly, there is often a very large gap between the things we believe and the ways we go about living our lives.

There’s an old saying that “The most segregated hour of the week is Sunday at 11 a.m.” I used to smile at that, and think it mildly cute, while rolling my eyes, because there is a lot of truth behind it. But as I’ve grown in my understanding of what the church could be (not just this one, but the whole church), I’ve realized that this statement isn’t particularly cute or funny. We surround ourselves with the people that follow the same rules that we follow. We do this not only in the churches we pick for ourselves, but also in the groups we in which we gather within each church. We decide that one group doesn’t follow the same rules that our group follows and it causes tension. We want them to be just like us.

We worry about our differences, and truth be told, we have a hard time acting graciously to those who either are different from us, or believe differently than we do. But there is good news for slightly selfish, _____________________ people like us. Our experiences and opinions and whatever else are not what binds us together. The cross is what binds us together. 1

But if we were really working with a theology of grace, these things would fade into the background.

A theology of grace– where we believed that we have been saved not by the things that we do and say and think, but by Christ alone, means that this same practice of grace and forgiveness ought to pour out of us onto everyone we meet. If all Christians embody a theology of grace, it would not be so surprising if we become more tolerant of the different ways in which people witness to the amazing things the cross means for our lives.

One of the writers I looked at this week suggested this exercise:

Stop. For a moment be completely still until you can hear and feel your heart beating within you. Marvel at the way it beats without your willing or controlling it. That life-giving pulse is a gift. Imagine with every beat that it is Christ who is beating in your heart, your savior living inside you. More than anything in the world you want Christ within you to shine through all that you do and say.2

When you are really to the point when the thing you want most in the world is for Christ to shine through everything you do, then grace can suddenly start pouring out of you. When that moment comes, then everything the cross means is suddenly real for you. And now that that has happened, the differences between you and “So and so” don’t matter much anymore, because you will know that your life is based on “Just Jesus”, which is the one thing that can ever make us one.